Category Archives: Rants and asides

Over-relying on flash drives isn’t so brilliant, either

OK, so I’ve learned not to over-rely on hard drives; my big mistake last Friday was that I’ve come to over-rely on my flash drive. It went down suddenly after Windows 7 offered to “scan and fix” it. It scanned my drive, all right, but there was no “fix” to it. Windows 7 killed my …

January 20, 2010 – 1:01 AM | By Craig Hansen | Posted in Rants and asides | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

2010 and still no external drive

After as many times as my hard drive has crashed the past couple years, you’d think by now I’d have purchased a reliable external hard drive. Well, you’d be wrong. Largely that’s because novels are tiny and I have an 8GB flash drive and while it certainly won’t store everything on my hard drive, it …

January 5, 2010 – 11:22 PM | By Craig Hansen | Posted in Rants and asides | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Spooky winter story

The spookiest winter story I’ve heard recently wasn’t crafted by Stephen King or Clive Barker. I heard it on the news. A married couple in Oregon decided to go up into the mountains to get a rare breed of pine tree for their Christmas tree. This happened about a week ago. They haven’t been heard …

December 24, 2009 – 11:35 AM | By Craig Hansen | Posted in Rants and asides | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

REVIEW: Western Governor’s University

While it used to be that the University of Phoenix was rather unique, now there are many online universities where one can acquire a high-quality online degree without spending a fortune or setting aside one’s current professional life. One of the more recent such places to emerge is Western Governor’s University, a nonprofit online university …

November 30, 2009 – 4:26 AM | By Craig Hansen | Posted in Rants and asides | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Reminiscing forward

I don’t care to the idea of daydreaming now that I’m over 40, but I do like to think about things I hope to do one day, like making New Orleans hotel reservations to attend a mystery writer’s conference. Wouldn’t that be fun? I’ve been to Louisiana only once, but nowhere near New Orleans. But …

November 10, 2009 – 1:03 AM | By Craig Hansen | Posted in Rants and asides | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Writer’s block: the benefits

A dirty little secret of writing is that sometimes writer’s block has its benefits; for one, it’s one of the great appetite suppressants because if you can’t write, you’re going to usually be to concerned with that little fact, rather than mundane concerns like eating. Also, it gives you time with your family; let’s face …

October 19, 2009 – 4:28 AM | By Craig Hansen | Posted in Rants and asides | Tagged , | Comments (0)

A filling for my birthday

Today was my birthday; I turned 43. Want to know how I spent my evening? On a romantic dinner with my wife? Nope. On a family dinner with my wife and my father? Wrong again. Hanging out with the guys and watching a game? Not even close. Nope, I spent the evening of my 43rd …

September 29, 2009 – 11:36 PM | By Craig Hansen | Posted in Rants and asides | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Fat writer blues

One thing that’s true about writing is that you don’t burn a lot of calories doing it. I’ve had a decent summer of writing, but I haven’t been very active and what that translates into is that there’s now about twenty pounds more of me. Considering there was already about sixty pounds too much of …

September 23, 2009 – 1:02 AM | By Craig Hansen | Posted in Rants and asides | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Thank goodness for flash drives

OK, so the running total of hard drives I’ve been through in the past 18 months just reached four. I’m now on my fifth drive and this time I ordered a high-quality, well-reviewed unit with a two-year factory warranty. Most drives come with 90 days, so hopefully the longer warranty is an indication of some …

July 27, 2009 – 4:21 AM | By Craig Hansen | Posted in Rants and asides | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Another hard drive crash … novel survives

It’s enough to make a person turn to diet pills. Or not. The point is, I had to wipe me entire hard drive and do a complete system restore over the weekend. It wasn’t a hard drive failure, this time; just some sort of corrupted system file that was serious enough to require a complete …

June 15, 2009 – 7:00 AM | By Craig Hansen | Posted in Rants and asides | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

A big surprise coming soon!

While I usually fill this blog with my own thoughts on writing and the craft of word-smithing, I am happy to say that I have a big surprise coming soon. In fact, I will be interviewing a very friendly and nice… and also, very recognizable… New York Times bestselling author. I’ll be asking this individual …

June 1, 2009 – 2:18 AM | By Craig Hansen | Posted in Rants and asides | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

How memory can save you

I’ve learned how memory can save your butt if you’re a writer, the hard way. Whether it’s a compact flash card or a full-on flash drive, it’s important to back up your work as a writer, and the more ways you have it backed up, the better. I learned this when I lost 100-plus pages …

May 31, 2009 – 11:34 PM | By Craig Hansen | Posted in Rants and asides | Tagged , , | Comments (0)